I glanced up from my reading, blinking into the light. In another world, platoons of early bathers had secured their beachheads, armed with parasols, cooler boxes, lotions, refreshments. Youngsters bobbed in their wet-suits behind the backline. Sharks, presumably, cruised below but abstained from attacks. Paradise had not changed demonstrably overnight.
The newspaper article describing Theron’s voyage from bush war to urban insurgency was surprisingly detailed and well-written, clearly based on a lengthy interview in which Theron had been allowed the luxury of explaining himself. I assumed it was written before the killings of the Cooktown Four. I had also assumed that it was written by Ray Gilliomee, but, in place of a top byline there was merely a set of initials at the end of the piece: JC. Of course, many reporters shared those initials, but I knew only one: Jess Chase.
Sitting at my impromptu work station I felt a vague unsteadiness, as people do in the aftershocks of tectonic convulsions, as if many of my assumptions had suddenly become untrustworthy, unsound.
Did the initials mean that Jess Chase now qualified for inclusion on the list of suspects along with Van Rensburg, Porter, Harris and the others? How qualified was I to pursue my inquiries if her alibi lay in my boudoir? Or were those precisely the doubts that Ray Gilliomee had intended to sow by folding the newspaper article into the book he had sold to me?
The excerpt from the transcript sent by Lily Nyati said the Judas was one of the group who had been absent from the meeting itself. But what could the motives have been? Jess did not qualify technically as one of those representing the Old Deep set, but she had set up the encounter and must therefore have been familiar with its coordinates.
As far as I knew, she had no reason to wish to betray a man she had beatified in print. But – if she was indeed the author of the article – where and how had she acquired such detailed knowledge of Theron’s biography? Where did that leave my suspicions about the events and the players on that fateful night in Port Elizabeth?
Riaan van Rensburg had dropped out at the last moment, according to his current wife at least. So that might mean he had gotten cold feet after meeting his contact, making his call, marking a pre-arranged wall or phone booth with white chalk, or however the tradecraft had been arranged. Alternatively, his decision might simply denote the failure of courage, as his wife had suggested – his bold lurch into direct action undermined by quavering inner voices counselling retreat.
Porter was different, a steely revolutionary, an organiser, deeply committed, who had served his time in prison and under banning orders – hardly the profile of a traitor. Except that he had not been where he said he was when the meeting took place.
And that left Rod Harris, Zoë Joubert’s former husband, the poet of The Struggle. Why would he betray everything he had made his sacrifices for, unless it had all been an elaborate invention, a fiction, a mole’s ploy to allow him to tunnel into the opposition? When he visited the Backlands had he really been anointed by the leaders of The Struggle, or, as so often happened, had he been turned by agents of the regime, sent back into the fray stripped of his former loyalties?
Perhaps I was looking at everything blindly, from a false perspective. What if the root cause of betrayal was not volition but coercion? What if one of my suspects had been vulnerable to pressure, blackmail, forced to provide information to protect themselves? Seen from that angle, any one of them might have been subverted, even Jess. Why else had she reacted so sharply when I told her of the mission entrusted to me by Lily Nyati?
What had Zoë Joubert said? Jess Chase knew everyone on all sides. So how deep did that knowledge go? How far had she slid into the trap of knowing too much, crossing the line between observer and player?
If she had interviewed Theron, had she been at least figuratively seduced by the soldier’s magnetic absolutism, the memory of total, uncompromising violence behind the blue eyes – the very resolve her own father had so conspicuously lacked? Perhaps the betrayal had been inadvertent, a slip of the tongue, a whispered conversation betrayed by an eavesdropper, a careless lapse in the precautions she routinely took to shelter her sources.
I returned to Van Rensburg. Doggedly loyal to Zoë Joubert, why would he provide information that was almost certain to harm her great project to breach the lines of colour? If he had been coerced, how could he have not understood the implications of betraying Nyati’s movements?
Surely, anyone providing information about such a prominent figure had to assume potentially terminal consequences – especially given the record of the times – Biko, Mxenge and all those who fell anonymously from the high windows of John Vorster Square police precinct in Johannesburg while “attempting to escape”. Would Porter have wished that? Or Harris? Or any of them?
I wrote down the names on a page of the A4 yellow legal pad. I ticked one name – my preliminary prime suspect, but without any evidence. I placed Jessica de Vere’s Cartier lighter on top of the dossier as a paperweight. It caught in the sunlight spilling through the open window. The lighter was one of the few baubles I might have afforded to purchase, had we stayed together. The rest of Chris de Vere’s financial offering was way beyond my pay grade.
I turned again to the transcripts, trying to marry the dry exchanges at the Commission with memories I had coaxed from the Old Deep set.
Eighteen
ACT ONE: A DESERTED ROAD, late at night, soon after Zoë Joubert and her delegation returned enthusiastically to their hotel rooms, incandescent with excitement at their encounter, at Solomon Nyati’s vindication of their Struggle, his anointment of them as freedom fighters.
Finally, they have tied the Gordian knot. They are whole, children of light emerging from the darkness. Imagine them, irrepressibly happy, determined not to discuss the encounter within earshot of the listening devices almost certainly planted in their hotel rooms, raising fingers to smiling lips, signalling silently to meet in the noise of the bar, the quiet of the parking lot, bursting with joy at their revolutionary act, celebrating, perhaps, with a spliff of cannabis or a few beers, their yearned-for admission to The Struggle.
But how ironic – pathetic, really – to think of them in light of what we know now, squinting into the rear-view mirror, looking over their shoulders, taking their half-baked security precautions when every last detail of their plans had been betrayed.
When they arrived to meet him, Nyati was waiting, ensconced at the home of a white activist, the chairs set out around the walls in a circle for their meeting. They shook hands – awkward, awed – and took their places. He asked their names and made each feel special with a remark that suggested he knew their work, in law, in protest.
I assumed that he addressed his remarks to Zoë Joubert as the natural leader, but not exclusively, his eyes roaming across the group as he praised their courage in wanting to cross the lines. The host brought in sandwiches and cold drinks – the last supper – and they spoke for 90 minutes.
What, they asked, could they do? How could they bring themselves into alignment with the revolution of the townships, but without the violence? Was there some Gandhi-esque middle road? Solomon Nyati pondered their bemusement with a light smile playing across his face, his bony fingers stroking a wispy beard. Well, you could hear him saying, it was simple enough. They should play to their strengths. No one was expecting them to throw rocks and petrol bombs.
But campus demonstrations, pro bono lawsuits, organisational work among the labour unions, setting their example among fellow whites – all that was within their remit. Newspaper articles to keep up the pressure. Peaceful demonstrations. Multi-racial structures.
Of course, there would be risks: If the security police reviled black protesters, imagine the feelings they harboured towards traitors within, whites eroding the very laager that shielded them.
He was not, Nyati said, the person to come to if they wanted to do more for the cause – intelligence work, sabotage training. He could not – would not? – help them there. For that they
would need to take different routes which he was not about to divulge – by-ways that led into exile, night-time flights across the border, safe houses in Lesotho and Swaziland and Mozambique, contacts with bombers, engineers, commissars.
If they took that route – and he was not counselling them to – their skin would mark them out as potential infiltrators, spies. They would need to prove themselves. They would be given perilous tasks. They would have a hard time of it. And when the regime got wind of their involvement, as it almost inevitably would, they could expect the worst – torture, prison, maybe even assassination dressed up as a suicide, a car wreck on a distant highway.
But, if he sometimes saw them at the funerals, along with the women from Black Sash and the priests and the people, Nyati said, then he would be heartened. Perhaps, he said, they would attend his funeral. Then he laughed when their faces fell so precipitately at that unimaginable prospect.
He told them what they wanted to hear, and he knew it. And they told him what he wanted to hear – that The Struggle was broadening, that it went beyond the small settlements, the crucibles of protest, into the white homesteads, the tennis courts, the fragrant gardens.
Take the message, he told them, and tell it to your people – the business people, the cricket players, the people looking the wrong way, blinded to the truth. Make them see what their land would be and could be. Tell them we are not monsters. We do not eat your babies or rape your women. We will not burn your homes, even if you burn ours. There will be no slave revolt. We seek only peace. The armed struggle has been forced upon us and we would rather talk than shoot.
Towards the end, Nyati inquired whether there had not been more of them scheduled to see him. Down the road, Theron settles in to wait, his machine pistol – his beloved Skorpion – resting easy in his lap.
Act Two: Nyati and his comrades pile into their Honda for the return trip to Cooktown, perhaps uneasy that the young whites had not arrived in the promised numbers, but not too worried. Three of the activists in the car that night were teachers suspended from their jobs, and all of them had learned that moves were afoot to reinstate them.
The testimony laid out in the transcripts of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made clear that the white authorities were divided, contemplating two solutions to the same problem.
One was to bring the teachers back into the fold, give them back their jobs, co-opt them into the system through promotion and status. The other was the method endorsed by the security establishment at the highest level, summed up in four words: “permanent removal from society”. But, piecing together the events, what shocked me most was the dry, almost clinical recounting of meetings within the security police elite, offered as if this formal record were some kind of fig leaf over the topic under discussion: assassination by death squad.
During my diplomatic days in South Africa, I had occasionally been required to act as an embassy observer at trials in which security officers gave testimony. Their manner was usually casual, vaguely insolent, with their weight on one leg, the other cocked at a jaunty angle, hands brushing jacket pockets to ensure that the pack of Chesterfields or Lucky Strike Filters was in place, waiting faithfully for the adjournments. There was no suggestion that, one day, they would be called to book.
Theron and his men saw themselves holding the slender line, their armour confronted by those whose only power was to resist, denying themselves a life if that was the price of victory. It was a battle of force against martyrdom, with each side possessing overwhelming superiority in their chosen tactics: the authorities had the guns, their enemies had the numbers, and the ability to make the land ungovernable.
And here, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, was the reckoning – the too-hot hearing rooms, the notetakers, the reporters with their pens scurrying to revise the national memory, so distant from those times of racing adrenaline, banging, booming gunfire, the blaze of tires over prone bodies, framed by the arcing parabola of Molotov cocktails. This was the last battle, for exculpation, closure: confession as a tool of escape.
Theron: “Colonel Van der Merwe summoned me to his office and told me that the situation at that stage had become so critical that there was only one way in which to try and stabilise these areas, and that was by means of the elimination of Mr Solomon Nyati and his closest colleagues.”
Question: “You have already referred to the situation which existed. What exactly was the situation at the time?”
Theron: “As I have said, we spoke again to Colonel Van der Merwe about the situation. He informed us that final permission to proceed with the elimination operation had been received from Colonel Snyman, who was the Commanding Officer.
Myself and Colonel Du Plessis, or the then Mr Du Plessis, went to Colonel Snyman’s office where a submission was made to Colonel Snyman by Colonel Du Plessis about the situation. This was no news to Colonel Snyman and he then stated that he agreed with us and I think his words were that we should do what would be in the best interest of the country.”
Question: “Thank you. Colonel Snyman tells you that you should do what is in the best interest of the country, what happens then? How did you understand or interpret this when he told you to do what would be in the best interest of the country?”
Theron: “I understood it that it would be final approval for the procedure of the elimination.”
Imagine them at police headquarters in the Eastern Cape. They check in for work, drinking sweet tea and instant coffee in the canteen, smoking in a collegial way. They go through the cables, the traffic.
Sometimes, they arrange a meet with an informer; perhaps take a call on a secure line. They read the transcripts from the interrogation centres, the phone taps, the bugs. They pore over their files, using typed flimsies to fill out their picture of who went where, who said what, who slept with whom, who plotted to overthrow the government. They authorise informers’ payments, perhaps creaming off a little for themselves. They report on progress in recruiting a double agent, a mole, turning a treacherous ANC guerrilla back into The Struggle in their own cause as a thug, an interrogator, a fall guy for their conspiracies.
They send their recommendations to a higher level and await a reply through the appropriate channels. They draw weapons and sign for unmarked cars and drive to remote townships – Cooktown, Cradock, Cookhouse – and burst into small houses at 3:00 am and drag people away to be beaten mercilessly, offered a choice between informing or incarceration. And at some stage, they receive the orders they know they will receive from the way they framed their “evidence”. Elimination. Permanent Removal. Best interests of the country.
Theron: “Mr Chairman, at that stage we knew all the suspects and political activists in the Eastern Cape quite well.
At that stage I had returned from a border duty in Ovamboland, not too long back and I was fairly aware of the activities in the Eastern Cape.
I would like to explain further. As a result of my conversation with Major Du Plessis at the time, I gave very intensive attention to these activities, specifically in respect of Mr Nyati and the people whom he had contact with especially in the rural areas as well as in Port Elizabeth.
During this time, a considerable number of names of suspects or people came to the fore, it included the names of the four deceased and these names came from various parts of the Eastern Cape.
After having familiarised myself with the most effective of these activists, in other words, the activists who posed the biggest problems and threats for us in the sense that they were responsible according to our information for the destabilisation and chaos in these areas, I spoke to Major Du Plessis again.”
And then, it becomes an operational matter, a question of practicalities, technique, cover stories, planning.
Theron: “The commanders proposed or gave the order that the attack should appear as if it was a vigilante attack, black-on-black. In other words we should use sharp objects to eliminate the individuals and that we should burn their bo
dies with petrol.”
Question: “That would be the method that would be followed. Did you then begin to investigate the ‘how’ component of the operation?” Theron: “That is correct. We felt that with our information that we had at our disposal, the best method would be to place them in a deserted road. They moved around a lot. Because of their activities, they were often travelling. Otherwise, it would be impossible to eliminate them in a concealed fashion.”
And remember. These cool, calculating words, these practical, professional debates – akin, perhaps, to a judge contemplating a thorny point of law, or a plumber discussing a blocked pipe – were conducted at public hearings of the Commission, in the presence of Lily Nyati and the other widows of the Cooktown Four. While the lawyers and the ex-policemen considered these technicalities, the women sat and listened with their eyes welling and their hearts entombed.
And the timing?
Question: “I think we were last at the point where you had begun planning the method of the operation. Your aim was to intercept the individuals on the road. The where and the when, could that have been included in the planning at that stage? We have the how, but now we need the date and the place? At that stage, would that have been included in the planning or would that have happened on an ad hoc basis?”
Theron: “That would have occurred on an ad hoc basis if the opportunity presented itself.”
Question: “So you have mentioned that the activities of these individuals had been monitored intensely in order to collect information regarding a proposed conference in Port Elizabeth. Could you expand?”
Theron: “That is correct Mr Chairperson. Information was received that a number of activists would be in Port Elizabeth. This was confirmed on the day that they were actually in Port Elizabeth for a conference or a meeting. The persons who were with Mr Nyati were identified by means of informers during the day. The informers — the main informer – was not in the meeting group. And I reported to Mr Du Plessis that that evening we would make an attempt or investigate the possibility of undertaking the operation.”
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